Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Goodbye Optimus Prime! I enjoyed reading your answers for the time that you have written for the Board, enjoyed meeting you and dubbing you "George," and enjoyed the surprise at learning that you wrote Double White Lines. (I never would have guessed it. For some reason Double White Lines came across as a girl with some attitude to me. Well done.)

I was just going to come and start the same thread! Thanks for the great writing, and I too would never have guessed you were double white lines. Sorry you're leaving on a sour note, you'll be missed

I just barely read the Board, and I was sad to see that Optimus was leaving. Good-bye and thank you!

I concur with those above O.P., you will be duly missed.

I so wasn't expecting the DWL's either. That's crazy.

Goodbye, Optimus Prime... I personally enjoyed your writing a lot (even more than some of the more prevalent writers like Katya and Claudio and Foreman.) Also, who knew that OP and The Cleaning Lady were married? Was that a secret, or am I just unable to pick up on subtle hints?

I was only moderately surprised by that one. Meaning that I knew she was married to a writer, and that it made sense when I heard it, but that I didn't know it before hand.

I knew! I knew! (o:

chillygator wrote:I knew! I knew! (o:

You know lots of things... that's why you're the princess. : D

Goodbye Optimus! I too was sad to read that, especially ending on such a sour note. And I never saw the DWL thing coming either. Impressive. You shall be missed!

Goodbye Optimus Prime. You will be missed.

I personally got a pig kick out of learning that Old Bald Guy and OP were alter-egos. For some reason, OP was single in my mind but Old Bald Guy was clearly married . . . I guess constant references to one's spouse will do that.

Wisteria wrote:I personally got a pig kick out of [...]

Can I just say, I love this phrase and will begin to utilize it as often as possible in my own speech.

Ha! I didn't even notice that until you pointed it out. Now I am pleased with myself for coining a new phrase.

I got a pig kick out of reading this thread. Thanks for the love everybody.

Regarding my nyms, I can give you a little backstory. When I decided to start writing, one of my goals* was to avoid, as much as possible, forcing my personal life on readers, referring to it only when it directly applied to the question. This was due to other writers who shall remain anonymous (*cough* Nike *cough*) who had the irritating** habit of referring to a husband or injecting irrelevant personal details for no reason. Optimus Prime was dedicated to actually answering the question - thoroughly and hopefully with a little bit of humor. He never made reference to his current personal life (and interestingly, no one ever asked), including marital status***, and never put extraneous postscripts or phrases after his name. Just answered the question. Old Bald Guy came about because I felt like I should contribute to questions about marriage, but didn't want to change Optimus Prime's persona. I am, in fact, balding and 28 (albeit married and with a real job), so it seemed appropriate. Double White Lines came about because I needed a way to vent and make sarcastic comments. For those of you who are surprised I wrote DWL, you should get a good laugh out of the fact that several of my answers were flagged by the editors as too inappropriate and at least one or two I didn't write or deleted after writing to save them the trouble. I started DWL spur of the moment because I always found the highway signs to be humorous, and only later realized they say "double white line" in the singular. Oh well. Oh, and the -= =- thing happened because I wanted to differentiate between Optimus Prime and Optimistic and I thought it looked kind of... Transformery.

Wow, that turned into a VH1 special or something. What other dirt can I dish? I answered a lot of questions, so there will be some shoes to fill. Unless you want to see a whole lot more of Katya, now's a good time to apply, I think. The inbox is overflowing with red questions. Oh, as for leaving on a sour note, it's probably not as bad as you think. I successfully defended my Master's thesis a week or two ago, and I got a job and have been living far from Utah since January. I'd been thinking about retiring for a few months, and that question finally made me realize that (1) I was getting a little snarky in my responses because I was just getting tired of seeing the same things appear over and over in slightly different forms and (2) I wouldn't regret not writing anymore. Combined with finishing school, it all coincided pretty well. You can bet that it won't be completely out of my system, however. You will undoubtedly find me lurking here and on the Board to assuage my withdrawal symptoms.



*My other main goal, and main inspiration for becoming a writer, was to actually answer the question. I get really irritated when writers say something like, "Well, I think the answer is this, but I didn't really bother to check or anything. And I know your question had two parts, but I'm just going to ignore the other one and only answer the part that takes no work."

**In another humorous irritating episode, look in the archives for a short time when she signed all her responses "and that's how the [insert related word here] cookie crumbles". She received considerable backlash from readers and writers alike and after staunchly defending the practice, quietly retired the phrase.

***You can go back and check if you want. It actually took some clever wording to do it without lying sometimes.

I have enjoyed all of your responses, posted under all of your personas. Thank you for the time you spent and the efforts you made.

OptimusPrime wrote:I got a pig kick out of reading this thread. Thanks for the love everybody.

Regarding my nyms, I can give you a little backstory. When I decided to start writing, one of my goals* was to avoid, as much as possible, forcing my personal life on readers, referring to it only when it directly applied to the question. This was due to other writers who shall remain anonymous (*cough* Nike *cough*) who had the irritating** habit of referring to a husband or injecting irrelevant personal details for no reason. Optimus Prime was dedicated to actually answering the question - thoroughly and hopefully with a little bit of humor. He never made reference to his current personal life (and interestingly, no one ever asked), including marital status***, and never put extraneous postscripts or phrases after his name. Just answered the question. Old Bald Guy came about because I felt like I should contribute to questions about marriage, but didn't want to change Optimus Prime's persona. I am, in fact, balding and 28 (albeit married and with a real job), so it seemed appropriate. Double White Lines came about because I needed a way to vent and make sarcastic comments. For those of you who are surprised I wrote DWL, you should get a good laugh out of the fact that several of my answers were flagged by the editors as too inappropriate and at least one or two I didn't write or deleted after writing to save them the trouble. I started DWL spur of the moment because I always found the highway signs to be humorous, and only later realized they say "double white line" in the singular. Oh well. Oh, and the -= =- thing happened because I wanted to differentiate between Optimus Prime and Optimistic and I thought it looked kind of... Transformery.

Wow, that turned into a VH1 special or something. What other dirt can I dish? I answered a lot of questions, so there will be some shoes to fill. Unless you want to see a whole lot more of Katya, now's a good time to apply, I think. The inbox is overflowing with red questions. Oh, as for leaving on a sour note, it's probably not as bad as you think. I successfully defended my Master's thesis a week or two ago, and I got a job and have been living far from Utah since January. I'd been thinking about retiring for a few months, and that question finally made me realize that (1) I was getting a little snarky in my responses because I was just getting tired of seeing the same things appear over and over in slightly different forms and (2) I wouldn't regret not writing anymore. Combined with finishing school, it all coincided pretty well. You can bet that it won't be completely out of my system, however. You will undoubtedly find me lurking here and on the Board to assuage my withdrawal symptoms.



*My other main goal, and main inspiration for becoming a writer, was to actually answer the question. I get really irritated when writers say something like, "Well, I think the answer is this, but I didn't really bother to check or anything. And I know your question had two parts, but I'm just going to ignore the other one and only answer the part that takes no work."

**In another humorous irritating episode, look in the archives for a short time when she signed all her responses "and that's how the [insert related word here] cookie crumbles". She received considerable backlash from readers and writers alike and after staunchly defending the practice, quietly retired the phrase.

***You can go back and check if you want. It actually took some clever wording to do it without lying sometimes.

I would have never associated DWL with you! I will miss your answers, but it sounds like you are off into the real world (as opposed to the world of school... which is sort of the real world, but not quite in my opinion)

Fredjikrang wrote:For some reason Double White Lines came across as a girl with some attitude to me. Well done.)

man, me too! I thought double white lines and twice marked were one and the same.